And Death Shall Have No Dominion
by Fuzzybutt
Summary: Bryoni Schirling and her family are some of the first to have their lives turned upside down in the worgen invasion of Gilneas. In their remote home deep in the woods, a creature lurks in the darkness.
1. Chapter 1

_And death shall have no dominion.  
>Dead mean naked they shall be one<br>With the man in the wind and the west moon;  
>When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,<br>They shall have stars at elbow and foot;  
>Though they go mad they shall be sane,<br>Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  
>Though lovers be lost love shall not;<br>And death shall have no dominion."_

* * *

><p>"Wisteria," the petite girl said as she sniffed the swaying flower her mother hung in front of her. Over her eyes and tied behind her head was a thick blindfold. Though the sun poured through the open archways and trellises of the small stone building, Bryoni was helpless to see through the dense black fabric.<p>

Bethany, beautiful beyond measure, reached her pale hand above her and plucked a bundle of dried herbs from a hook on the low ceiling. The marble surface above them was crisscrossed with wooden beams that dry the herbs from the elaborate garden just outside their walls. Bryoni's face changed as she caught a whiff from the new plant.

"Very good. Try this one."

"Hyssop."

"Excellent! Now, if ya can't guess this one, you're grounded for life. Understand?"

Bryoni grinned wide, ready for the challenge. She fidgeted on the stool as she waited. Then, it came to her, and her face lit up.

"Rosemary!"

Bethany blinked and chuckled, poking Bryoni hard in the shoulder. "No fair! I hadn't even took it off the hook yet. Ya won't learn if ya keep lookin' ahead... Now quit it, or you're scrubbin' dishes tonight."

Unable to stop grinning, Bryoni nodded nonetheless. Carefully, watching her daughter's expression, Bethany reached for another herb and then brought it down to her.

"Think about it for moment..."

"Uh... calendula?" Bryoni replied uncertainly. Her young face twisted slightly as she struggled to identify the scent.

"Chamomile." Bethany smiled slightly at her daughter's obvious frustration. "Close, love. It's alright."

Bryoni pulled the blindfold from her eyes and sighed. "I don't think I'm any good at this, Mum..."

"Nonsense. Ya got them all right but that one. Don't worry your pretty little head any." She beamed at Bryoni. On any other day her cheerfulness would have rubbed off on Bryoni, but since she woke that morning, the girl seemed uneasy. Rather than smiling in return, her head dropped and she stared at the tiles on the floor.

"What did Ethan want last night?"

Bethany stared at Bryoni and for a moment she considered lying. She hadn't realized that the girl was awake when the surly man banged on their door, deep into the woods of Gilneas. "He wanted me to come to town for a drink." This made her daughter frown.

"Why does he chase after ya like that?"

With a chuckle, Bethany shrugged and then sighed. "He's just mad I picked a man that was kind, not rich. He likes wavin' his money around bcause he thinks it'll make me think twice."

"Will it?" Bryoni looked up at her mother, truly uncertain.

"...Are ya kiddin' me?"

The teen simply shook her head in response.

Bethany kneeled in front of Bryoni and rested her palms on the tops of Bryoni's legs. "I wouldn't trade ya for wealth, Bryoni. I wouldn't give up your father for the fancy gifts from a bitter fool. I wouldn't sell your brother to the gypsies, even though he tracks mud on the carpet every day. Ya know why?"

Bryoni shook her head, frowning.

"Because here in the forest, the trees watch over ya when ya sleep. The flames in the hearth rise in happiness when ya walk in the room. Ya can hear the mermaids singin' their songs by the bay. Here, a book is more valuable and more dangerous than a thousand swords, and ya walk carefully on the grass because it means somethin' to ya that it's alive."

Bryoni finally begins to smile as her mother continued.

"Moonbeams are more than just rays of silver light; they're blessin's, every one of them. The wolves and the wild boars flock to our home for refuge because they know those who walk with nature are a peaceful sort... and peace, family, and happiness mean more to me than the opportunity to be a rich man's wife." Bethany raised her eyebrow as she waits for a response from the grinning girl.

"...Okay," Bryoni says after a few moments. Though her father was the poet of the family, both parents had a remarkable way with words. "I believe ya." Leaning down to hug her mother, Bryoni closed her eyes and relaxed, her cheek pressed against her mother's. Peace came over her, but in the back of her mind, a festering thought remained.

"Would ya like to continue?"

Bryoni released her mother and looked out through the windows to the garden and then into the distance. Past the pear trees, farther than the mushroom rings, somewhere down the sloping hills, a familiar rhythm traveled to meet her ears. "I think I'll play a while."

She was met with a smile and a nod. Her mother ruffled her hair and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Bryoni didn't follow the sound immediately. It was several hours later before she came home, tired from unabashed exploration, and communion with every living thing she came across.

The cold clap of a hammer against steel echoed between the trees at her father's forge. Bryoni watched him with a warm smile as he curved the blade over the horn of the anvil with every strike. As he put the unfinished sword into the forge once more, he removed his heavy gloves and smiled at her in return. She had her mother's gift, just as all of the other women before her, but her heart belonged to her father.

Liam turned his gaze skyward. The nebulous clouds of a Gilnean storm had begun to creep on the horizon. Soon, a blackness would cover their land. Not even the moon would shine tonight. "Ya ready to read some, then?"


	2. Chapter 2

_"And death shall have no dominion._  
><em>Under the windings of the sea<em>  
><em>They lying long shall not die windily;<em>  
><em>Twisting on racks when sinews give way,<em>  
><em>Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;<em>  
><em>Faith in their hands shall snap in two,<em>  
><em>And the unicorn evils run them through;<em>  
><em>Split all ends up they shan't crack;<em>  
><em>And death shall have no dominion."<em>

* * *

><p>Roses. Her mother's favorite. As she laid against her father's shoulder, tucked in the crook of his arm, the scent came on the wind to meet her. The breeze from the ocean picked up strands of Bryoni's thin auburn hair and carried it over her shoulders, then back. Her mother would tell her that the spirits of the air delight in playing with the hair of pretty girls, but Bryoni took her skepticism from her father. Regardless of how fanciful the idea was, it brought a smile to her lips.<p>

"I would I were a careless child, still dwelling in my Highland cave,  
>Or roaming through the dusky wild, or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;<br>The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride accords not with the freeborn soul,  
>Which loves the mountain's craggy side, and seeks the rocks where billows roll."<p>

Liam's voice was that of a lamb. He was hardly an imposing man; he was, in fact, shorter than her mother. Even so, his physique was hardened and gruff, and Bryoni thought it funny that he found such joy in Byron's poetry. As they sat there on the bench in Bethany's rose garden, the heads of the flowers bobbing and weaving in the stormy wind, night began to close in around them. The candle light from the wide kitchen window behind them now illuminated their book better than the sky above.

Gregory, not yet in his 9th year, stood on a footstool beside his mother in the kitchen as they washed the dishes. Together, they sang some familiar folk song that Bryoni would one day wish she could remember. The slight girl looked at her father. Once again, the festering thought returned to her. In her mind's eye, Bryoni saw barbed wire and a black sinuous shape capering in dark delight. It left her feeling unclean.

"Fortune! take back these cultured lands, take back this name of splendid sound!  
>I hate the touch of servile hands, I hate the slaves that cringe around.<br>Place me among the rocks I love, which sound to Ocean's wildest roar;  
>I ask but this - again to rove through scenes my youth hath known before."<p>

Inside the house, Bethany's dish washing slowed to a stop and the song fell silent. She stared at the far wall of the kitchen.

"Mum?" Gregory asked as he clutched the plate in his towel, but he received no reply. His mother took several slow steps towards the silence on the other side of the wall. Her hand retrieved a sharp knife from the kitchen table. Finally, a subtle noise issued from the wooden planks of their cabin. Something outside had brushed against the timber.

"Fain would I fly the haunts of men - I seek to shun, not hate mankind;  
>My breast requires the sullen glen, whose gloom may suit a darken'd mind.<br>Oh! that to me the wings were given which bear the turtle to her nest!  
>Then would I cleave the vault of heaven, to flee away, and be at rest."<p>

The wall was splintered as the monstrosity threw itself into their home, bringing with it bedlam. It's claws ripped at the floorboards as it hurled itself forward in blind fury towards the harvest witch and her child, their shrill cries lost to it. Bethany shoved the boy to the floor and covered his body with her own.

Liam rose from the bench at the hollow snap of breaking wood. Leaping towards the door, he told Bryoni to stay put, and the intensity of his eyes left her feeling unarmed as she stood alone in the dusk of the garden. Three wide strides is all it took her father to travel the distance to the door to the kitchen.

There were wails, so animalistic that Bryoni could not tell who or what it came from. She watched silently the shadows thrown on the amber glass of the kitchen window, until finally a thick spray of blood splashed across the panes. Though she had not intended it, a miserable cry came from her lips and she found herself failing to breathe, failing to look away, failing to think. Her eyes fixated on the red stain that flowed down the window and pooled at the sill as she tried to rationalize what could be unfolding beyond it. Shadows still danced as the turmoil continued.

Every noise from inside the home sounded wet.

Then there was an deafening howl and finally silence, all but for the heavy breathing of something inside.

Bryoni ran for the kitchen door, nearly pulling it from its hinges as she tore it open and stepped into full view of the horror. There, her father stood staring at the cadavers around his feet. The overturned and shattered kitchen table lied over the corpse of a hulking beast of fur and jagged teeth. The hellion, equally wolf and man, was motionless and staring, its eyes fixated on something, anything, nothing. Across the room, Gregory's lifeless body was strewn next to his mother's. Parts of her were missing.

No words came from Bryoni. As her breath finally returned, she quaked at the sight before her. A tortured sob escaped her thin lips. Liam's eyes met hers, snapped from his daze. He rushed to her and held her tightly, turning her head away from the room. She nevertheless heard the creature's body emit sickening cracks as it transformed back into Ethan James.

"Dad..."

"Let's go."

Bryoni moaned, unable to move. Her grief immobilized her.

"Bry-" Her fathers words were cut short as a pair of strong, furred arms broke through the kitchen door and ripped Bryoni by the shoulders back through the fragile boards and into the garden below. As her body hit the cobblestones beneath her, the wind was taken from her lungs. She wanted to scream as the thing's jaws clamped around her thigh and its fangs sunk into her flesh, but she was unable.

Another wet noise sounded from above her as her father's blacksmith hammer made contact with the beast's skull. It howled in pain and received howls in response from others of its kind, lurking in the woods. Another impact, then another, each accompanied by Liam's frenzied heaving. He picked Bryoni's body up from the pool of blood on the stoney ground and stomped through the roses as he ran for his life and hers to the small marble shrine on top of the far hill.


End file.
